
By: Peter Landau
While it's always a good idea to put together project goals, the approach that you take to do so is important. Simply choosing goals because you think you should or those that are particularly difficult to track and measure don't do a good job of keeping you on track throughout the project. This is why SMART goals are so effective.
What are SMART Goals?
SMART is a mnemonic acronym that establishes criteria for ideal goals and objectives in a project. SMART stands for specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time related. This means that a goal must meet these criteria to be considered a SMART goal.
SMART goals help project managers, business managers, and any other types of team leaders define clear objectives that should be accomplished by their teams. Best of all, SMART goals can be used to measure the effectiveness of virtually any project or task.
Within that simple set of criteria is a guide to help teams be more productive, while always keeping goals in mind. Without goals, there is no focus, and without focus the chance of successfully completing a project is slim.
How to Write SMART Goals
Now that SMART is clearly defined, how do you write SMART goals? Well, it should be obvious now that the process starts with asking a lot of questions. Pose questions to yourself, your team and even stakeholders. The answers to these questions will whittle down your options and sharpen your strategy. From there, goals will become clear and attainable.
Make Your Goal Specific:
Begin by defining what it is that you're trying to achieve. Be specific. Ask the five Ws: who, what, why, where and which. For example:
Who is going to be involved in achieving this goal?
What project management tools will they need to accomplish it?
Why is the goal important?
Where will the work be located?
Which resources are needed to do it?
The more you can focus on the specifics, the more achievable the goal.
2. Make Your Goal Measurable
In order for a goal to be SMART, it must be measurable, and to track your progress toward your goal, you have to know how to measure it. That keeps you on track and motivates you to finish on time. So, in order to be successful, you need to regularly monitor and assess your progress.
Also, you have to know how to tell when you've reached that goal, so as not to waste time once it's already been achieved. Basically, you must set up metrics to measure your progress. Project milestones can help break up a timeline if a project extends over some months.
3. Make Your Goal Achievable
There's no point in having and measuring a goal that impossible to achieve. Therefore, another criterion for a SMART goal is discerning if the goal you've defined is realistic. You want to reach beyond what you think is possible (because nothing is achieved by playing it safe), but not so far that the project comes crashing down on top of you.
You must know your project resources well, and ask if this goal can be accomplished considering the constraints under which you're working, which include scheduling and costs.
4. Make Your Goal Relevant
The goal is now defined, measurable and achievable, but is it relevant? A SMART goal has to be relevant, and that doesn't mean just to you but should be aligned with the larger goals of the organization.
That means your goal, even after meeting all the prior criteria, must align with other relevant goals because success requires support and assistance from everyone on the project team. It must work in tandem with other parts of the project and the overall strategy of the organization.
This creates a whole new set of questions such as, is the goal worthwhile? Maybe the time isn't right. Does it match other needs? Maybe you're not the right person to lead this initiative, or maybe it's not aligned with current economics or social trends. If it offers the right answers to these questions, then it's relevant.
5. Make Your Goal Time-Bound
A SMART goal will always be time-related because goals often cannot be achieved without a deadline. A deadline serves as a great motivator and can provide context for you to recognize the various tasks necessary to reach that goal in the time allotted. Therefore, giving the goal time constraints helps keep you on track.
Naturally, you must answer questions, such as: when must the goal be achieved? Then get more specific; is that in six months, six weeks, six days? Without a time frame, you can't devise a plan, and the goal will never be realized.
Why are SMART goals important?
SMART goals are important to set as they:
Help you work with clear intentions, not broad or vague goals.
Provide a method to gauge your success by setting benchmarks to meet.
Give sensible objectives that are realistic and achievable
Cut out unnecessary or irrelevant work that could take away from what's important
Set a clear beginning and end to adhere to in reaching your goals.
When you make goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, you're increasing your odds for success by verifying that the goal is achievable, identifying the metrics that define success, and creating a roadmap to reach those metrics.
If your goals are abstract, if you don't know what it will take to achieve success, or if you don't give yourself a deadline to complete steps, you may lose focus and fall short of what you want to accomplish.
Benefits of SMART Goals
Offer focus and clarity:
The process of goal completion is often more complicated than it seems. Distractions, side tasks, and other projects can all steer you away from completing your projects.
But SMART goals improve focus because they simplify your to-do list of tasks. At the same time, they offer an immediate reminder of why those specific tasks are important.
Boost Motivation:
It's not unusual to experience stress of overwhelm in the workplace. One contributor is often a lack of clear goals. And that combination can make a serious impact on your motivation.
But a SMART goal can boost energy, improve direction, and motivate you and your team because:
It gets everyone more involved in the process
It helps employees understand why their work is important
It offers a new challenge and direction for people who are feeling stuck
Improve Accountability:
Fear of failure often stops people from doing their best work. To avoid this stressor, you might avoid making a commitment in the workplace.
But accountability is an essential for high growth teams. It helps you and your teams. It helps you and your team engage, take ownership of their work, and take responsibility for progress.
SMART goals improve accountability because they give teams and managers a simple way to track progress toward shared objectives. This makes it easier for teams to understand the learning, coaching, and feedback they need to optimize performance.
SMART goals also help teams manage and plan their time more effectively. They mae it easier to prioritize tasks to.
Strengthen Communication:
SMART goals help with effective communication. This is because they're goals that multiple coworkers, teams, and departments can quickly understand. This improves knowledge-sharing, collaborative efforts and communication.
Increase Innovation:
Innovation is a process that combines creativity and problem-solving skills to get original ideas. You may have heard the common belief says that creativity requires a lack of boundaries. And some critiques of SMART goals say that they can have negative impacts if goal-setting is too rigid or narrowly defined.
Enhance Performance:
For managers, SMART goals offer a useful framework for improving employee performance. They make progress toward project goals clear. This goal-setting framework can also apply to long-term personal goals for each member of your team.
For individuals, SMART goals can make it easier to balance and track work projects. They can boost performance because they help you:
Measure progress
Identify strengths and weaknesses
Build positive momentum
Setting and working toward SMART goals can also help you develop new behaviours that can improve performance.
How to Make a SMART Goal
Use specific wording
Include measurable goals
Aim for realistically attainable goals
Pick relevant goals that relate to your business
Make goals time-bound by including a timeframe and deadline information.
Five Do's When Making a SMART Goal:
1) Use specific writing
2) Include measurable goals
3)Aim for realistically attainable goals
4)Pick relevant goals that relate to your business
5) Make goals time bound.
Five Don'ts When Making SMART Goal:
1) Use vague language
2) leave out KPI
3) Set unattainable goals
4) Lose sight of the company goals
5) Forget to set a timeframe
Now that you know what a SMART goal is, why it's important, and the framework to create one, it's time to put that information into practice. Whether you're setting goals for a personal achievement or as part of hitting important marketing milestones, it's good to start with what you want to achieve and then reverse engineer it into a concrete SMART goal.
Written By: Clifford Chi
Comentários